For those of you who just want the meat of how to setup ddwrt, and don't give a damn about my little story, scroll down until you see the screenshot and start reading the paragraph above that. (Oh, and screw you!)
So, the turion lappy (who I've happily named neptune64), is temporarily being held hostage by a group of mexican thugs (no, seriously). (Well not quite hostage but they've requested a ransom--at a modest price, so I can't complain. Ah the perils of the physical world).
This leaves me entirely dependent on my old celeron lappy (which was meant to be purposed as a server; in fact, this was the system I setup to host a pxe server and nfs). My Celeron lappy, which I've happily named centauri, has a Family 15 cpu, Model 2, Stepping 9, 128KB cache, 2790.8 mhz, which I recently upgraded from 256MB of PC2700 ddr, to 512 MB at PC2100 (sure 2700 is faster, but twice the ram is much faster!). When I have money I'll upgrade this sucker to 4GB. Too bad there aren't more ram slots or I could use Physical Address Extension (PAE).
As I somewhat explained in a previous blogpost, centauri has a problem with the internal wireless adapter (bcm4306). Whereas before the BIOS would boot stating a IRQ resource conflict with the bcm4306 as the culprit, now lspci -v fails to even show the device present in the system). So, attempting any software hacks will definetely not work at this point--we need a new physical solution.
So, sometime in the past 7 years I came across a Linksys WRT54GL. I rarely used it, as I would rely on my 5-port gigabit airlink switch instead (and later my asus 8-port gigabit switch). Eventually, I used slackware to setup my own router via gigabit interfaces using a bridge (in conjunction with the 8-port-gigabit-asus), I decided to let the Linksys go to my parents where they could use it in the house. Since I am currently unemployed and living with my parents (bummer!), I had to fix the network a couple of times. I am the IT admin/ lackey/ janitor here, and my pay is no rent plus food (not a bad deal if you ask me, although when I do find work I'd love to upgrade the dsl connection to something > than 1.5 MB).
So, I was told the Linksys no longer worked. My family went and purchased a wireless N capable Dlink. However, they were having a host of other problems. Turns out the actiontec modem/ap was broadcasting one ssid, and the dlink was broadcasting an entirely different network. Little did they know even though they purchased the dlink, they weren't in fact actually using it. All of the clients would connect to the airlink, that is, everyone except the little netflix streaming roku, which I have yet to explain why.
So I had to consolidate everything to one network, disable the ssid on the actiontec, and bingo everything works on the dlink (while of course setting the dlink on a seperate lan, 192.168.1.x).
Note: do not read the next paragraph unless you are absolutely curious as to the process of what I had to endure in order to fix my home network. If you truly don't care, I promise I wont be upset. Also, it may confuse most of you. Those of you who are interested purely for the challenge, feel free to comment on my gimped setup (i.e. seasoned *nix users, I welcome your input).
(That was the shortened instruction set. Most people would disable dhcp entirely on the first router, or place it in bridge mode (I seriously think only 2wire routers have this option). And, since most instructions would have you connect the first ap to the 2nd ap via the lan ports, I was having trouble passing NAT and DNS via the 2nd ap's wifi. Since there is no bridge mode on the actiontec, I opted to simply leave dhcp on in the first ap/modem while disabling the ssid, set the 2nd ap on a seperate lan, while connecting ap 1 to ap 2 via the wan port. Although a bit convoluted, I no longer have issues with dns. Well, mostly. Most of the windows clients, except my little sisters laptop and mine, which I had to hardcode dns in /etc/resolv.conf, oh and her ipod. Oh, and get this, the actiontec will randomly re-enable the ssid, simply because it feels compelled to be the boss. I've seriously had to disable it like 5 times already. It's frustrating.)
If anyone needs help with a similar setup, feel free to comment / Email me.
So anyways, I was told the Linksys no longer works. I called bullshit (especially considering the mess my family of computer geniuses left everything in). I perused the settings to see if there was anything remote to using the AP as a repeater, or set it up via a wifi wpa2 bridge, but nothing was in the linksys firmware. Now, I had originally intended to use openwrt for this project, however although I am certainly not opposed to the *nix style environment (I'd actually prefer this), according to the wiki there are a host of packages you need to download in order to get a wpa2 bridge going:
http://wiki.openwrt.org/oldwiki/wirelessbridgewithwpahowto?s[]=wireless&s[]=repeater .
Furthermore, the setup isn't exactly straightforward. That and considering I have a deadline on some projects I'm working on (note: submitting resumes to find jobs--there is a contract I'm trying to settle as we speak), I figured I'd settle for a working solution for now until I have the time to setup the environment I'd prefer (this is a trade-off I did when I first started using linux--my first home distro was fedora. That plus my redhat training made my transition to slack much smoother).
So, my instructions were gleamed from Brian Purdy's post on lifehacker. I will do you folks the favor of simplifying his post. It looks like he had to do a lot of extra work, my setup was actually pretty simple.
First, go to ddwrt's site http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index . Next, lookup your router in the router DB, and browse to the appropriate link. According to Brian, the micro firmware will suit our purposes just fine. (This is acceptable, since my next upgrade will be openwrt). He mentions that you should powercycle the hell out of your router, although I found I had no such need to do so. Simply go your routers homepage and find the appropriate link: mine was Linksys > Administration > firmware link, and begin the upgrade by loading the micro.bin firmware. (Note, if your router doesn't have a webgui option to load firmware, you may have to utilize tftp. Consult the dd-wrt wiki for more info). You should see a "Upgrade is Successful," message appear (sorry guys I didn't take a screenshot, but it is a very simple webpage). Afterwards, your router will reboot, and you'll need to re-authenticate with the following credentials:
username: root
password: admin
(It took me a couple tries to figure it out.. I know I ride the short bus, bare with me.)
Next, comes for the configuration:
A. Edit Wireless: Wireless Tab (Basic Settings)
> Switch wireless mode to repeater
> For wireless network name, input the SSID of the network you will be rebroadcasting (or repeating).
>> Save settings (do not apply just yet)
> Below the main section you edited is a Virtual Interfaces section. Add 1 virtual interface
> Add a NEW name for your repeater (i.e., the original SSID appended with a 2, which is what I did. Or you can use an entirely different SSID).
>> Save settings (do not apply just yet)
>> Head to wireless security subtab
> Ensure you use the same security settings your primary router/wifi access point utilizes in both the primary and virtual interfaces. For WPA2, take care to notice whether you use TKIP, AES, or both.
>> Save settings (do not apply just yet)
B. Network configuration: Network setup tab (Basic Configuration)
> Alter the routers Local IP Address to something different than the primary access point. I.e. if your main router uses 192.168.1.1, you can use 192.168.2.1 (which is what I did).
>> Save settings (do not apply just yet)
>> Switch to the Security subtab (Still under Main Network Setup tab)
> disable SPI firewall
> Under Block WAN requests, disable the following:
- Block Anonymous WAN Requests (ping)
- Filter WAN NAT Redirection
- Filter IDENT (Port 113)
> Leave Filter Multicast disabled
(Note: the above settings are to ensure the simplest configuration in case anything goes wrong. If you feel compelled to re-enable them after your configuration is working, feel free to do so and report your results).
>> Save settings (and for the love of god don't apply yet!)
> Head over to the administration, and for Pete's sake--change the password to something you can remember (if you haven't already done so).
>> Once again, save settings. Now you can Apply!
So first things first, since you changed the lan ip your ap is using, you will need to renew your dhcp lease for your interface. Now in my configuration, this ap repeater is providing internet over ethernet to my gimped celeron lappy. For those of you who are using this over wireless, configure your wireless as normal.
Best thing is to simply bring down the interface, and re-initialize it. This way, the routing table will be reset. When I first tried it I noticed it was still trying to use 192.168.1.1 as the primary gateway under route -a.
After you have established a link over your desired interface, perform a basic network check:
> ping your accesspoint, i.e. in my case 192.168.2.1. Also a good time to see if you can browse to your repeater ap, and to test your new login credentials.
> if this is good, now try pinging the primary access point (in my case 192.168.0.1)
> if this is good, you should also be able to browse to the primary ap's interface (a good check).
> Now, hold your breath, a real WAN test. Ping the following IP (which i'm told is a DNS for Verizon): 4.2.2.2
> If the above works, you are online! Now, for a dns test: ping your favorite website, i.e. slugman01.blogger.com
> if you receive replies, you are golden. If not, you may need to hardcode the dns listed in your modem/primary ap's page in /etc/resolv.conf
At this point you should be able to browse the interwebs. Note: if you had your browser open prior to this point, you may need to restart it if you have problems loading webpages. For some reason, even after the above network test confirmed I was online, firefox hung on loading basic webpages. Restarting it did the trick.
If you experience any problems, feel free to post here and I'll do the best I can to help. Important points to remember are:
> ensure your physical interface is working properly. If it isn't, you'll fail right off the bat when you try to ping your access points.
> if you can ping your repeater access point, but not the primary, doublecheck your routing table to ensure it is using the correct primary gateway. A simple ifconfig interface down; ifconfig interface up will clear the routing table. If you are statically assigning your addresses you can setup via ifconfig and add the gateway via route as normal. Otherwise, if you are using a dhcp lease then make sure to kill the process id (or killall -9), the process for the dhcp application (in my case, dhcpcd), prior to re-initializing the interfaces, or it may screw up when it tries to grab the new lease.
> if you can ping & browse your primary access point, but can't ping WAN (4.2.2.2), make sure your primary access point doesn't have ping requests blocked, or has its firewall disabled. (Remember, in my case I have 3 access points, the modem/ap, the dlink ap, and my repeater. The dlink provides the firewall.) Or, it may be possible you temporarily lost internebs while seting up: check the status page of your modem/ primary ap to doublecheck.
If you are fortunate enough to have a linux system connected to the primary ap/ or a windows system with putty, or any *nix environment with ssh, try making sure they can ping said IP- 4.2.2.2 . If they can't ping it, but can still browse, its likely ping requests have been disabled from the primary ap. I recommend re-enabling ping just to make sure you can perform the "ping a domain name," test afterwards. It really helps to narrow down if you are having a WAN or DNS issue.
Good hunting!
- Slug
